A Comparison of the Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Performance between Reinforced Concrete and Cross-Laminated Timber Structures in Residential Buildings in the Severe Cold Region of China

Haibo Guo, Ying Liu, Yiping Meng, Haoyu Huang, Cheng Sun and Yu Shao
Additional contact information
Haibo Guo: School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Ying Liu: Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Yiping Meng: School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Haoyu Huang: Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Cheng Sun: School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Yu Shao: School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the energy saving and carbon reduction performance of cross-laminated timber residential buildings in the severe cold region of China through a computational simulation approach. The authors selected Harbin as the simulation environment, designed reference residential buildings with different storeys which were constructed using reinforced concrete (RC) and cross-laminated timber (CLT) systems, then simulated the energy performance using the commercial software IES TM and finally made comparisions between the RC and CLT buildings. The results show that the estimated energy consumption and carbon emissions for CLT buildings are 9.9% and 13.2% lower than those of RC buildings in view of life-cycle assessment. This indicates that the CLT construction system has good potential for energy saving when compared to RC in the severe cold region of China. The energy efficiency of residential buildings is closely related to the height for both RC and CLT buildings. In spite of the higher cost of materials for high-rise buildings, both RC and CLT tall residential buildings have better energy efficiency than low-rise and mid-rise buildings in the severe cold region of China.

Keywords: carbon reduction; energy saving; severe cold region; cross-laminated timber (CLT); residential building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1426/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1426/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:8:p:1426-:d:108000

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().